How Will Gear Work? And How Will Boss Fights Work?

Two very different questions I wanna ask you guys.

Will the gear/loot system be similar to WOW's in that enemies drop individual pieces of armor that you collect and add on to your character for stats or will it be like Guild Wars where you farm mats to make a set of standard armor (standard meaning once max-level, there are no stat differences between armor of the same slot and level)?

Then... Does anyone know anything about boss fight mechanics? Will we be moving out of 'fire' (replace 'fire' with whatever sort of bad thing you'd want to move away from) and have other mechanics to keep you on your toes or will everything be sort of tank-and-spank?

basically this can be found on the swtor site (cant post links yet sorry)

Each Raid has 2 sizes, for 8 and 16 heros, aswell as ajustable difficulty levels. The quality of the loot is based on the difficulty setting of the instance." After every bossfight EACH player gets a bag of Rewards", sais Lead designer Gabe Amatangelo. "Inside that Bag you "can" ( as in possiblitly ) find class specific Items, or Badges which can be used to buy items. You don't have to fight for your rewards."

another quote found out there is

'Loot containers' (name is still a work in progress!) do indeed exist and are designed to alleviate the frustration some feel around high-level loot drops.

As it's currently implemented, at the end of a key encounter within an Operation, upon looting a high-level opponent, everyone in the Operations group will get an individual container which has a chance to give you a random piece of loot that's specific to your class. It could be part of an armor set, a weapon, and so on. If you don't get loot, you'll get commendations which can be used to purchase gear.

Will the gear/loot system be similar to WOW's in that enemies drop individual pieces of armor that you collect and add on to your character for stats or will it be like Guild Wars where you farm mats to make a set of standard armor (standard meaning once max-level, there are no stat differences between armor of the same slot and level)?

Then... Does anyone know anything about boss fight mechanics? Will we be moving out of 'fire' (replace 'fire' with whatever sort of bad thing you'd want to move away from) and have other mechanics to keep you on your toes or will everything be sort of tank-and-spank?

Loot from bosses has so far ONLY been confirmed to drop in individual loot bags for every player in the group. When that person opens thier (likely soulbound) bag there will be a chance for an appropriately specced item to drop. Otherwise the bag will give you somewhat of a severance package of points that can be used to buy gear with and maybe nothing (not sure if no item you always get points or only sometimes).
Anyways a lot of people are mearly hoping that harder difficulty operations/raids ("heroic operations") will drop gear similar to WoW (not sure why)

I myself have not looked into much as far as boss strategies. I've seen some videos and they seem fairly basic but they are usually incomplete, in development or some of the easier bosses. Someone else might know better about specifics. One robot boss I saw looked very tank-and-spank with some adds.

Since this game has a lot more to offer it's not something I pay attention to much, so my info may not be 100% accurate or up to date but that is what I've seen.

I myself have not looked into much as far as boss strategies. I've seen some videos and they seem fairly basic but they are usually incomplete, in development or some of the easier bosses. Someone else might know better about specifics. One robot boss I saw looked very tank-and-spank with some adds.

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Well you also have to remember that that fight there (I assume you're talking about the first boss in EV, since that's the only giant robot I know) is the first boss of the first operation on the easiest setting, I'm sure they'll have a great deal more mechanics than was previewed there.

I'd try and answer your question OP but really the only thing we know about boss fights have been from the three videos they've released about Taral V, The Esseles (spelling?), and the first boss in the Eternity Vault. Not much else to base it on that's "legal". And Argroth already answered your question about loot, although I've heard that on the hardest difficulty that there will be loot drops off the boss. Now if that's true, I dont' know if you get that loot in combination with the loot bag or if you only get that loot.

Blasted NDA, sometimes I enjoy it since it keeps me from seeing story spoilers on every website, but sometimes it keeps me from knowing a good deal about mechanics that I want to know.

Will the gear/loot system be similar to WOW's in that enemies drop individual pieces of armor that you collect and add on to your character for stats or will it be like Guild Wars where you farm mats to make a set of standard armor (standard meaning once max-level, there are no stat differences between armor of the same slot and level)?

Then... Does anyone know anything about boss fight mechanics? Will we be moving out of 'fire' (replace 'fire' with whatever sort of bad thing you'd want to move away from) and have other mechanics to keep you on your toes or will everything be sort of tank-and-spank?

We know that the gear will have stats on it similar to WoW, we have official confirmation that each class has its one main stat, like WoW with intelligence, agility and strength. Except the main stats aren't simply role based where casters want intelligence gear, but more along the lines of BH want to have a certain main stat and then secondary stats aligned with what role they want to fill.

And as for bosses we really don't know much about them yet, we've seen a single raid boss that was probably tuned down quite a bit to make it seem a bit simpler. They have mentioned encounters where instead of fighting a boss you instead have to fight off enemies while trying to complete a puzzle. I think they even mentioned a fight where everyone goes 1v1 with an enemy with everyone else not able to interrupt (if it makes it in i'm betting on it being in the raid with the hutts involved) rather than 8/16 v 1 big guy with adds